


A Life

by tuliptoes



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: After endgame, F/M, endgame spoilers i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:14:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23210782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuliptoes/pseuds/tuliptoes
Summary: My head canon about Steve and Peggy after Endgame.
Relationships: Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Kudos: 25





	A Life

Peggy asks him to stay, so he stays.

He knows what it means; he is here, but he’s also there, asleep under the ice, and he has to stay there, so if he stays, he has to let Steve Rogers sleep.

And he sleeps.

And he lives.

He changes his name, he’s now Samuel Steven Carter, and he marries Peggy in a small ceremony at City Hall as they both beam at each other. The justice of the peace gives them a wink at their last names, and Peggy smiles back, tells him there's no need now to change anything.

Steve laughs too, because everything has changed, and it’s all stayed the same.

He asks her if she wants to know the future, and she says no, nothing definitive, only hints, and only if they are important.

He regrets what he cannot tell her, and sometimes he has trouble sleeping knowing what’s happening, but he lets her know where to look, and he trusts her to make it work. Maybe this timeline will work out better than his own.

Maybe.

Steve could work, but he prefers not having a steady job. He works on odd jobs around their neighborhood, helping people move furniture or fix a leaky faucet, all that stuff he remembers how to do, but he never had time to. 

And then there are the kids.

There are so many children in this neighborhood, and after the war, there are not enough fathers for all of them. For so many, there’s no one to teach the boys how to shave or throw the perfect curve ball or how to ask a girl on a date.

For so many, there’s no one to practice dancing with the girls, who can tell them what it means when the boy she likes doesn’t call, or how to change a tire.

So Steve becomes their dad, all at once he has these children who need him, who depend on him to show up for a crisis, and he always, always delivers, even if he sometimes has to be late.

He’s a coach, and a dance partner, he’ll be there for the father-son three legged race (and he always wins), and he’s there for the father-daughter picnics every year, having tea with his daughters and laughing with the other dads.

It’s years of this, and he tells Peggy that he would like a child, to see one grow up from a baby, and she gives him a sad look, because she wants one too, but the timing isn’t good, it’s never good. And Steve holds her, he understands, of course he understands, she has to keep the world safe for all the other babies.

But the desire doesn’t go away.

Peggy comes home with a baby and without a word, places the bundle, a newborn girl, in his arms. 

Someone left the baby in a basket at their office door, and she needs someone to look after her. She looks at him, and he knows she’s not lying, but that’s there’s more to this story. But he looks at the girl in his arms, and she smiles at him, and he knows the story doesn’t matter.

It takes months to get used to her, but they do. Steve asks if they can name her Natasha, after an old friend who didn’t make it, and Peggy looks at his sad eyes and says yes. 

His other children visit all the time to look at the baby, and they help Steve as he adjusts to round-the-clock fatherhood, watching her so he can shower, or take a nap, or go for a quick run. They adopt her too, and even as an infant, she comes to their games and their dances, and she is the little sister all those boys and girls wanted before the war killed those hopes. 

Steve and Peggy tell Nat her story, that she came to them rather than them making her, and she’s sad for a bit, but they tell her every day how happy they are that she chose them. They mean it everytime.

And in no time at all, little Nat, who loves playing catch in the backyard and wearing poodle skirts to church, is off to school, where she loves recess and art best, but the right teacher can get her to love the book stuff too.

But his children have grown up, left the neighborhood for other neighborhoods, and he’s happy for them all, but he misses them, he misses the way Nat needed him because she doesn’t anymore.

Peggy asks him if he still wants another child, and when he says no, she’s relieved too, and they laugh and hold each other all night. They love their adopted children, and that’s everything.

But Steve needs something else.

And he finds it.

Walking his daughter home from school, he sees an old restaurant, closed down for years, but the bones are good, so sturdy, sturdy enough for just the right person to rebuild.

And he does. He tries not to think of the future too much, because it’s hard when he misses things there, but he remembers the food. He remembers that there is better food out there, and he thinks that people here will love it, they just don’t know it.

So he rebuilds, names his diner Tony’s Place, and Peggy laughs at the name, but won’t tell him why. He hires cooks who don’t look like him, cooks who can bring flavors and spices to ordinary dishes that Americans aren’t used to, and those two Hispanic men and two Black women create marvels in his kitchen.

More years pass, he sells the diner to them, on the condition that his Returning Heroes policy, that veterans will always eat for free, is honored. They agree, of course they agree, and Steve is always welcome.

But Nat is going to college, and Peggy is tired more and more, and she wants to step away for a bit, see the world that she’s spent so much time saving, and they travel and sightsee, and they come back anytime Nat needs them, anytime one of their other kids would like their advice or help, they are there for all of them.

But they can’t seem to stay still anymore, and they keep going and going. 

And they never stop.


End file.
